


Love Handles

by basaltgrrl



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basaltgrrl/pseuds/basaltgrrl





	Love Handles

"Do you think Gene's been drinking more than usual?" Sam wanted the question to be casual, perhaps even joking, but the tone felt odd and obsessive. He laughed, trying to establish an indifference he didn't really feel, cast his eyes sideways at Annie and then mentally slapped himself for it. Don't act like a foolish schoolgirl!

They were together at the bar at the Railway Arms, and although the room was busy and humming with conversation and laughter he thought that the only person who might have overheard him was Nelson.

Annie cocked her head at him, took a sip from her own pint. "Are we talking about our DCI, or about some other prim and proper Gene?"

At the other end of the pub Gene struck a pose, aiming a dart at the board. The bulge at his waist was unmistakably bulgy.

"I just... look, he's--I know he's always enjoyed a pint, and then another pint, and then a whisky chaser, and then a few more rounds with the lads. But." Sam forced his eyes down to the glass between his hands, sighed, and tossed back the remaining mouthful. "I'm just more aware..." He trailed off. This wasn't a good idea. 

"Are you worried about him, Sam?" Annie's tone was more clinical than concerned.

"No! It's nowt to me if he destroys his liver! But look at his skin tone!"

They both gazed down the bar. Gene was now engaged in a rollicking laugh with Ray and Geoff, slapping one man on the back and unintentionally slopping some beer onto the other man's shoes. His face was not quite beet red, but in the general color-range.

"I don't think he's changed, honestly," she said. "Same old Gene Hunt."

Sam sighed again, morosely stared into his own empty glass and then gestured with a finger to Nelson. "Another pint and chaser."

"No problem, mon brave! How goes the battle today, Sam?"

"Same old sense of pointlessness and disillusionment."

"Ah yes. But keep your heart open to the world."

Sam accepted the brimming pint of bitter with a nod. "Whatever you say. Cheers." The first sip was soothing, refreshing. Whatever other frustrations he continued to have with 1973 (and to be truthful, they were legion) there was a certain freedom--a great deal of blessed freedom--in getting pissed of an evening. This was his third pint? A chaser after each? He belched stentoriously and shot Annie a guilty grin.

"Maybe Gene should be worried about you," she said pointedly, and took another dainty sip of her own beer.

"You usually go with port-and-lemon," he commented. "Giving in to peer pressure?"

"Not at all. I'm just not as hidebound as you blokes. I'm able to make a different beverage choice each evening. In fact," she set down her nearly empty glass, "I'm also able to walk myself home at an hour well before closing time."

He slid hurriedly off his seat, sloshing beer over his hand in his hurry. "You don't have to go, Annie. I'll stop with the maudlin woe is me shite. It's just--"

"Sam." She put a hand on his sleeve, stopping him in his verbal tracks. "We'll talk about this tomorrow, OK?"

He stared into her wide, honest eyes. Truthful, is what they were. Never offering him less than her genuine opinion of him, or his barmy crackpot ideas, or the occasional madness that was CID. He felt a sudden cold certainty that she knew, she knew why he was worried about Gene's pint intake, that she knew the sorts of things two men might get up to once one of them had become a lodger of the other. Lodging. Living in Gene's house, being a part of his life and his world, an element in his environment. Could she see all that?

"I won't want to talk about it tomorrow," he said. The words felt petulant the moment he said them, but true for all that.

"Then it's just as well." She patted his arm. "I am going home now, Sam. And--wait, before you offer, thank you but I don't need a walk home."

He felt the blush rising up his neck. "I wasn't going to--"

She smiled. The one with the dimples. She didn't need words, not with him. Her look said so much; affection, concern, all the things he probably should never have told her were piled up in her gaze, and all the times he had awkwardly tried to court her. Sometimes all that just embarassed him now.

"Yeah. Cheers. Tomorrow then." He pulled back from her hand, defiantly didn't turn to watch her put her jacket on and walk to the front door. He heard it creak and slam, then heaved a huge breath and took a seat at the bar. The whisky burned as it slid down his throat.

"Oi. Nelson. Another one for me, and one for my picky pain of a DI, here." It was Gene, larger than life and warm as a fire, close enough that Sam could feel him through the leather jacket. Sam's pint still sat half full on the bar, glowing golden in the incandescent light. Sam had a sudden flash of the sleek stainless steel and halogen brightness of 2006--not a vision, or a hallucination, but simply a memory so full of detail as to seem real. It seemed stunningly real but also ridiculously distant, just like Sam's beloved Nokia, the neat ranks of his DVDs and the astounding pleasure of walking down to the corner store to buy a salmon steak and a fresh bundle of asparagus spears for dinner. Not only were there those sorts of sensory pleasures, but if he had Gene in that world they'd be walking down the street hand in hand. Or maybe not, not as co-workers, but there'd be no playacting about landlord and lodger. They'd be able to go to a bar, or a club, buy each other drinks, flirt and go home together.

"Cheers." Gene picked up the fresh pint, clinked it against Sam's half-filled glass and poured a third of it down his own throat.

"Guv," Sam managed. He sounded hoarse, all of a sudden. "It's late. Don't know as I need another one."

"What are you on about? I'm still playing darts."

"No, you're not. You're talking to me."

"Bollocks."

"Skip the whisky chaser and let's go home."

"Are you ill?"

"Fuck. No." Sam rested his fists against his temples, closed his eyes for a moment. The room really was swimming around him. Am I becoming an alcoholic? he wondered furtively, veered away from that unpleasant thought to the more obvious one: is Gene one? Has he been one for as long as I've known him? If this is all in my head, did I want an alcoholic boss? Did I want an excuse to drink the nights away? Is that what Gene is, an excuse? Is he my excuse to explore my fucking sexuality?

"Sam." It was Gene's serious tone.

"What."

"Are you all right? Do I need to take you home? Put you to bed?"

This earned him a bleary eye over the ridge of Sam's knuckles. "Would you?"

"Tuck you in? Read you a bedtime story?"

"Bastard."

"I'll go warm up the Cortina, shall I?"

Sam slammed his palms down on the bar. "Go finish your bloody game, Hunt." He drew breath and let it out. The room seemed smaller, dingier. Another flash of memory; a thumping beat, bright lights and shadows, feeling sharp and fit and bubbly with alcohol, bumping shoulders with a group of friends as they hopped from bar to bar. So different from this place with it's permanent haze of smoke and the sad, stale smell of spilled beer, the cracked leather on the seats and the looming bulk of his Guv, half threatening and half sympathetic. If Sam knew for sure that any of the comforting words were meant genuinely rather than as a sarcastic quip...

"I'm going to play it out, and then we're leaving. Shake it off, Gloomy Gus." Gene's hand brushed across Sam's shoulder, hovering, lingering, gone.

Sam kept his fists on the bar, supporting himself. He could feel Nelson's gaze. "Sorry," he said at last. "I--don't know what's come over me."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Sam. Everybody has an off night, now and then. Seems like you're due one."

"Don't know if it works like that." 

"There's some justice in the world, mon brave. You can't tell me there isn't. I wouldn't be here tending bar if there weren't."

It piqued Sam's curiosity, the way Nelson always did. Such a conundrum. He still wondered, although he had only ever once asked the question out loud, from which recesses the man had come. He'd learned to allow people to have their stories. It made life easier. Except for nights like this, nights when he thought about cell phones and Radiohead and sleek modern cars with an almost feverish intensity.

"Do you think Gene's unhealthy?" The question popped out of him unexpectedly.

Nelson quirked an eyebrow, then gazed at the impressive figure majestically aiming a dart at the board. "He's a man of his time, Sam. Just as you are. You know what he's capable of."

Sam bit his tongue. "Oh, aye," he managed after throttling down a hysterical giggle, and tossed back the rest of the whisky with a fatalistic sense of cheer.

"He'll go ten rounds with the criminals, is what I'm saying. As long as he can manage that, isn't he fit enough?"

"Fit enough," Sam agreed, muffling a belch in his hand. "But. It's his belly I'm worried about. Man hates to eat a vegetable. Drinks beer every night. Bound to have an effect."

"Not with you to cook for him, eh Sam?"

Sam blinked owlishly. Had Nelson just... insinuated something? "Wh--what do you mean?"

"I know what you're up to; I see it all, man. I watch and I notice things, keep it all to myself I do." He tempered his words with the flash of a smile. "You care about him, is all. It's good for Mr. Hunt to have you as a lodger. He needs someone who cares what he's shoving in his gob!"

"It's just because I like to cook," Sam stammered.

"I know that. Rest easy, Sam."

"And he likes to eat."

"That he does." 

They resumed their contemplation of Gene's performance. He did cut an impressive figure, tossing a dart, just as he did in every other venue of his life. It was hard to imagine him as a slimmer, lesser man. He carried his weight well. The truth was, Sam had become used to Gene's bulk--Gene's gut. The way he filled out a shirt. The way he used his podge to bully his way through life. The disbelief and outrage Sam had felt on that first day in CID when Gene's body sent his own crashing against the filing cabinet... well, that had changed a lot, hadn't it? Maybe he didn't even want to think about how much. Maybe it was easier to float on the unpredictable river of Gene's drive, to let himself be caught up in work and routine and yes, he was back to musing on the freedom of getting pissed of an evening.

It was hours later by the time Gene was escorting--nay, supporting Sam through his doorway and into the unlit hall that led to the staircase that led upstairs to the bedroom the two of them shared.

"Told you," Sam enunciated with care. "C'n walk by myself. Own two feet." Gene's arm was warm around him, steady, unlike the swaying walls.

"So you did. Here, get your arse settled." Gene snapped on the light, guided him gently into one of the kitchen chairs and turned to the sink.

"'S time for bed."

"Water first, or you'll be sick. Did you pour a bottle down your throat, Gladys?"

"'M not a child."

"Could have fooled me. You certainly drink like one." He turned back from the sink with a full glass of water and held it patiently in front of Sam's face. "Finish this and I'll get you another. If I didn't appreciate your scrawny arse so much I'd make you sleep on the sofa."

Sam took the glass in both hands and drank, suddenly and absurdly grateful for the care. And then it was empty, and he was handing it back to Gene, and then he was taking it back full again, and then he was slouched in the kitchen chair sleepy and pleasantly gurgling with water and beer and a gentle hum of appreciation.

"Gene," he said in a singsong, and giggled. 

"What is it, my daft DI?"

"I just--just want you to know..."

"Yes?"

"I like these." He reached out and grabbed the bulges on either side of Gene's midriff, gave them a gentle squeeze. "You've got... love handles."

"Keep that in mind the next time you're after me to eat a bleeding salad, Marjorie." 

But Gene put his hands over Sam's and squeezed back, gently, and his expression, when Sam tilted his wobbly head back to take a look, was wry and affectionate. It was so absurd in so many ways, in ways he'd never be able to articulate to anyone here, or even to anyone back in what he still thought of as his own year. Whether in 1973 or 2006, Sam would never have pictured himself with this man, but at this point he felt so much of a bond that it almost ceased to matter when it really was or how it had come about. He loved this bloke. Thought the words to himself but managed not to spill them out, even though a drunken grin split his face.

"Wouldn't want you any other way."

"This is the only way you're having me."


End file.
